As part of Dr. RE's plan, I scheduled and had my lovely yearly GYN appointment. God, how I hate them. If I wanted an appointment in the next century, I had to go with one of the new doctors that they have recently added the practice. The doc that I have been dealing with for my PPD (Dr. Perfect) and the last 10 weeks of my pregnancy with Son was booked out over a month. What can I say, I like to think that I play with the popular kids.
Anyway, I ended up taking the appointment with the new doc. She was really nice, actually knew something about PCOS (imagine!!), and, get this, actually read my chart. How cool is that? She even told me that Dr. Perfect had been checking my TSH levels in the past. Didn't know that. Well, we do the exam. Have to say, she was great with the speculem part of it-I didn't even know that she had done it! Two points for doc. I might allow her near me again with one of those damn things.
Then, she just did her job. You know, upholding the whole Hippocratic oath. Which promptly caused me to fall apart in the car as I was leaving, yell at Husband, who only partially had it coming, and just basically dissolve into a heap. Yes, several of my finer moments of late. Usually I would only reserve a breakdown of this magnitude when leaving the RE's office. But rage I did. It was the first time in months that I have actually cried. I have to say, it was not cathartic in the least.
The whole thing that triggered the meltdown was that she went into some depth on how PCOS can affect me in ways other than infertility. She didn't say anything that little Ms. researcher that I am, didn't know. How my chances for diabetes are a lot higher, and combined with my GD, I'm even more at risk. Cholesterol issues (have to admit that I had blown that one off...I haven't had a cholesterol check in over a decade). Heart disease. Increased risk for stroke, which is unsettling since both my grandmother and great-grandmother ultimately died from strokes. Basically, I have to get my shit together or I'm going to die early, or at best, have to deal with a long list of maladies. Add that on top of the whole turning 35 issue, where I saw a sign in the restroom saying that I need to get a baseline mammogram, and it just felt completely overwhelming. Like I will never, ever, be able to do anything that makes a damn difference.
All of the years of battling the weight, battling the infertility, just plain battling, seem to come down at once. I know what I need to do. I do. I've educated myself. However, that knowledge doesn't seem to get me anywhere. I'm pissed at myself, hate myself, hate looking in the mirror. I can't believe my husband when he says that he's still attracted to me. I just can't buy it. I know what he sees, what he feels, and I would be repulsed. I don't know why he keeps coming back for more. A lot of other men would have just walked away.
All of this just makes me believe that I have no right to subject another baby to having me as a mother. All of the things that could go wrong. I could say that no, we won't try in December like we had been talking about, since I am in no position physically to do this again. That we'll wait until March and that will give me some time to drop the weight, remember what a treadmill looks like. Then I think that I have been down this path before, before I had a child to take care of, when it was just me, and I failed miserably. I had four years to get this right before I had Son, and I didn't fix it then either. How on earth am I going to be able to do this now? Between being a part-time single mom (not Husband's fault), doing the work of essentially two people with little hope of relief, and just trying to do the basic stuff at home (where I am making NO progress), I don't have a lot of hope that anything can really change. Oh, maybe a couple of weeks worth, but after that, it all goes back to the same as it was before. I get to add yet another failure to the long, and not-so-distinguished list.
I know that I have nothing but a litany of what others outside would deem excuses, and I don't know what to do.
1. I don't have time to exercise. Honestly, I don't know where it would come from. I pick Son up from daycare between 5:30 and 6:00. It's a roughly 30 min drive home. Feed Son, try to load the dishwasher or fold some laundry, or gee, have a meal myself, give Son bath, put Son in bed, and lo and behold, it's 8:30 and the last thing that I want to do is haul my ass to the gym. Husband keeps harping on that I should work out at work before I go home. Due to the different time zones I have to deal with, knocking off before 5:00 really can't happen. So that gives me a whole 30 minutes, if I'm lucky. I guess that 30 minutes is better than nothing, but it just feels like another obligation, and then I have to rush and pray that I can get to daycare on time. I hate having Son being the last kid there. It just feels lonely to me. The other option is that I go when I get home. And that will work how? Husband has been the walking dead lately, so I don't feel like I can impose on him to take care of Son while I go to the gym. He's been busting his ass for the past three weeks without any time off, and I go to the gym? That doesn't seem fair either. If I ever could go, I wouldn't get to see Son at all. I can't go in the morning since Husband leaves for work at 6:15. Who would take care of Son?
2. The whole diet thing just never, ever works. Ever. I'm 35, and I think that I have spent 30 of those years trying to be the right size. It's never worked. I can't count the number of times I cried in elementary school, or agonized over whether to tell my Mom about what the yearly height and weight check had revealed. I'm in such a cycle of failure I can't seem to ever get off of it. Plus, I have to admit, food is the only way that I can reward myself without anyone else getting a say. I guess that in the end all it has done is hurt me.
I'm so frustrated and pissed at the whole thing. The only person that this needs to be squarely aimed at is me. I'm the only one that has done this to myself. I'm looking down the tunnel, and I'm not seeing any light. I've never shied away from working hard for anything else, so why can't I just get it together and do this? I'm frustrated that the rational, always cautious me says, quite loudly, that I need to wait. Wait some more. Just eat less stupid. The small child in me screams, stamps my feet, and says, "NO!! I've had to wait for EVERYTHING and I'm sick of having to be patient. I'm sick of having to bow to everyone else's demands. SCREW YOU, I'M GOING TO DO WHAT I WANT FOR A CHANGE!!"
Lastly, I'm scared. I've always been scared of death, and I can't imagine what it will be like when confronted with it. So scared that I can't seem to move lest it find me. Scared that I won't get to see my Son as an adult. I just feel so trapped by all of the failures and the demands. This is stuff that regular adults handle all of the time. That the fitness profiles in Shape can overcome. Just once, why can't it be me?
3 comments:
I understand the difficulty in finding time to exercise. I try to walk on breaks and on my lunch hour.
Total assvice, but is there any way you can get a treadmill for home? We got a refurbished one that was pretty inexpensive. Of course, I'm told that it will only help me get into shape if I actually get on the stupid thing, which I haven't done in months. I'm just so exhausted at the end of the day, and the idea of getting up early to get on it makes me want to cry. I feel your pain!
The whole PCOS thing sucks. But you have every right to want another child. It would take more than a metabolic disorder to get rid of that desire.
I know I'm going to come off as a bitch, but this has to be said. You are using your schedule and your life as an excuse to be overweight, when, in reality, it should be an excuse to get into shape.
There are women just as busy as yourself who find the time. You can too. I know it's hard. Really. My life is busy too, but I find the time to get and stay healthy.
You need to make getting into shape a priority. Easy for me to say, harder to do. Get up earlier, exercise after dinner, before bed, whatever it takes. Actually, the best start is to trim your diet. It is way harder to burn off the calories from a chocolate bar than it is to not eat it in the first place.
With that said... I understand what you mean when you say that you don't believe your husband. At my heaviest (a good three months after the twins were born) my hubby prattled on about how attractive he still found me. Men are great sometimes, no?
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